With hundreds of miles of separation between each other, couples in long-distance relationships don’t get the quintessential Valentine’s Day dinner date. Consequently, their approach to celebrating the holiday might be a little more noteworthy.
Carissa Smith, a freshman biology major at PLNU, describes how her relationship with her boyfriend, Noah Noxon, who attends Capital Christian High School in Sacramento, California, began.
“We had a few classes together in high school, and we would hang out after school,” said Smith. “He would help me with math homework.”
Their after-school hangouts evolved into a solid friendship and later into a tenacious relationship. Smith describes her boyfriend as her best friend and says it makes dating much easier.
“When I decided to come to Point Loma, I just couldn’t imagine not dating him,” said Smith.
Although Smith says it’s hard not being able to see Noxon every day, she has no heartache about it because they have actually learned to communicate better.
“Despite having distance between us, I feel like it makes our relationship stronger,” said Noxon. “It shows that we can continually support each other even when we aren’t physically together.”
This Valentine’s Day, Smith and Noxon are both planning surprises for each other. Smith got in touch with a few of Noxon’s friends at school and had them get Noxon a card with a special message written on it from Smith.
Uncertain of his planned surprise and with a rosy look in her eyes, Smith said, “Sometimes he mails me things, so I’m kind of thinking that’s what he’ll do.”
In the same way that high school facilitated Smith and Noxon’s relationship, it brought together Joseph Ault, a PLNU sophomore majoring in biology, and his girlfriend Arlene Avalos who attends Dixie State University in St. George, Utah.
Ault and Avalos were both raised by parents in the military and met in high school while stationed in Japan. Avalos transferred into Ault’s high school as a junior and sat in the seat right in front of Ault in the classroom. A friendship developed between them, and Ault decided one day to ask her to dinner. They’ve been dating ever since.
Avalos later told Ault that their teacher had given her two options of places to sit in the classroom on her first day, and she chose the seat right in front of Ault because she “thought he was cute.”
Ault has always felt that his relationship with Avalos has been strong, and when it came time to decide whether they were going to continue their relationship with distance, he said they wanted to commit to each other.
“We decided that we wanted to go ahead and get promise rings and just kind of accept the fact that we were going to get married,” said Ault.
Ault and Avalos are both very busy people and have found that there are several days in the week when they only have time to send goodmorning and goodnight texts to each other. So, they have two sheets of paper that they mail back and forth, on which they write a small message about their day and draw a picture.
Ault says that both of their Wednesday schedules are busy, so they’ll be celebrating this Valentine’s Day on Saturday, February 17.
“We’ll set up Netflix and we’ll press play at the same time and then text throughout so we’re watching shows together,” said Ault. “We’ll take a good chunk of the day to catch up.”
Written by Jaime Pederson.
Steve Anderson 
superadmin